After our reading time, I will ask students to move back into their small reading groups that I assigned yesterday. These are groups of eight students made up of mixed abilities.

I will ask each group to work together to read and comprehend Act 2, scene 1 of Othello. They started reading yesterday, but most groups only completed a few pages in the time provided.

Yesterday, I wandered the room to see how they did at establishing roles in collaborative groups. Today I will wander the room to listen in on how they are propelling their conversations towards communal understanding of theme, character and plot (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1c). I will also pop into conversations to remind them to be filling in their dichotomy graphic organizers, which is the tool I have provided for them to gather textual evidence (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.1) and monitor comprehension in a more concrete way.

Resources (1)

Resources

To check in and make sure that groups are on the same page in regards to basic comprehension of the text, I will stop the class once all groups have finished scene 1 and ask the following questions:

What new characters do we meet in this scene? What relationship do they have to characters we already know?

Describe Iago's attitude or tone towards the women in the scene. Why is he such a jerk?

What does Iago tell Roderigo to do? What do you notice is different about his speaking patterns here? What is Roderigo's response?

All of these questions point them back to dichotomies they are tracing. I hope that they will see that Iago is manipulative of almost everyone he talks to and that he bounces back and forth between rhymed iambic pentameter, blank verse and prose. We've discussed this in class already, so in asking them to pay attention to his speech patterns, I hope to point out how Iago feels about each of the characters as well as his actions/words.

Once we've checked in on comprehension, I will have them continue reading Act 2, scene 3 with their groups. I will make the suggestion that they need to pause and summarize every so often. Usually students just plow ahead in Shakespeare, but I want to make sure they are taking the time to trace their findings and monitor their comprehension.

Before we move into the Social Studies portion of our period, I will call them back together to ask for any questions. I will then assign a reading homework assignment, due on Thursday (2 days from now).